session arrays

[muze]

I'm trying to pass variables among many pages, in an interactive choose your own adventure game.  I created the entire thing using sessions, and everything works as intended, but during high traffic there is much slowdown.  I had memcached installed and that helped the slowdown considerably but it's still slowing down the site when there is a lot of traffic.

 

I've been told using session arrays, instead of all these individual sessions, will help alleviate the server load.

 

So I don't know if that's true or not, but I'd like to get the correct syntax for using these session arrays.

 

First question - is it absolutely necessary to call the array()  ?

 

 $_SESSION['game']=array();

 

Or if this is two separate sessions -

 

    $_SESSION['stairs'] = "true";

    $_SESSION['dance'] = "true";

 

Is this two parts of one session array?

$_SESSION['game']["stairs"]="true";

$_SESSION['game']["dance"]="true";

 

And in that case, do I need to call the array()  ?

 

I'm seeing different examples of session arrays online so I'm trying to get this clarified.  Thanks. 

 

PS The purpose of the sessions is that I need them to be checked many pages later in the game in many cases.  And I can't just add all the parts of the array at once, which is why I create an empty array first, to have items added as necessary as a user progresses through the game.